After you make sure that your shirt is pressed and your socks match, move on to the research phase.

Research is more than using mapquest to find out where you are going. It’s more than reading the company’s website.

Research falls into two basic categories: the person you are meeting and the organization for which they work.

Is the hiring manager on linkedin? How long have they worked at the company? Have they been promoted? Where did they go to school? Have they always been in this business?

Is the company public or private? What does the corporate structure look like? Where is the headquarters? Have they won awards or been recognized for special activities? Are expanding? Do they have a new product line?

Investing this time will pay big dividends. It will give you just that bit of extra confidence when you walk in and shake hands with the interviewer. It will also help you pick the anecdotes from your career that you are going to use as examples in the inevitable behavioral questions. You can pick stories that are going to really resonate with the hiring team.

The last and maybe the biggest reason to do all this research is to make sure that the organization is aligned with your values and mission.

There is nothing worse than bragging about your new job offer to your friends and having someone ask how that massive product recall is affecting them or whether the class action lawsuit has been settled. Sure, it’s never too late to back out but wouldn’t it be better to have known about it from the get go?